by Nik

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February 25th, 2023. In the early parts of Spring Training, the warm sun in both Jupiter, Flordia and Southeast Missouri couldn’t brigthen up the bleak month ahead. Even before the season we all wanted to forget, started.

I was sitting with my mom, watching a Cardinals Spring Training game. SHe had protested baseball the year I was borrn, 1994, when the players went on strike. So, kind of out of the ordinary for both of us, we just didn’t watch that much ball together in the past.

My mom was sick, and was dealing with a fractured spine. We all wanted things to feel normal. We watched the Cardinals lose to the Nationals 3-2. It felt niece to share that moment with her. She commented on Brednan Donovan’s home run and was impressed with his stats. Being removed nearly 29 years form any involvement with the game, there was a sense of normalcy talking about the players and what was happening. I knew with a little more time, I could have convinced her to watch as many games as possible with me.

My mother and father shared a lot of moments in the ballpark, especially when they lived in Los Angeles. They would go to many, if not all, Cardinals/Dodgers seriees with their brothers and sisters. In September ’94, they moved to Southeast Missouri, just a few months before I was born.

On March 28th, 2023, my mother passed away from cancer.

The world stops. You forget about things–your favorite things–because nothing in that time matters anymore. You forget about baseball too. You eventually come back to earth. Two days later it was quickly over, and the season began. The Cardinals would embark on a universally horrid year, too.

A year later, the world still turns–or rather, it continues without people you were once sharing something as insignificant as a spring training game. Even the year before, her hearing my father, brother, and I screaming in agony when Mikolas lost his no-hitter in the 9th inning, and in pure excitement when Albert Pujols hit his 700th career home run–that made her crack a smile.

As I am so lucky and grateful to be sitting in Malibu, California this morning, at Zuma Beach, where my parents once lived. I thinking about it all still. This place where my parents lived their beautiful lives. A year gone and another Opening Day. A lot of ucomfortable realizations and changes. Four seasons of the year have went by, even an entire basball off-season, and I’m still thinking of you.

Every day.